Bay State Judge Elected To Yale Board

NEW HAVEN — Yale alumni have picked a judge who helped strike down the ban on gay marriage in Massachusetts to fill an open seat on the university's governing board, the Yale Corporation.

Margaret Marshall, the first woman to serve as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, was picked over two venture capitalists also nominated for a position on Yale's 17-member board. Her appointment was announced Thursday.

Marshall is a 1976 graduate of Yale Law School. As a college student in her native South Africa, she was elected president of a student organization that took part in the fight against apartheid.

Her position on gay marriage has made her popular among another marginalized group -- gays and lesbians -- who view her election to the governing board of the Ivy League school as a sign of society's growing support for gay equality.

``I think it's an affirmation of her role in progressive social change,'' said Jonathan D. Katz, a Yale professor who heads the school's gay and lesbian studies program.

Yale Law School Dean Anthony Kronman called Marshall a talented lawyer, conscientious judge and loyal alumnus. He said in a prepared statement that he was delighted with her election.

Marshall earned a master's degree in education at Harvard University before graduating from Yale's law school. She later worked at a Boston law firm, specializing in intellectual property rights, and went on to become vice president and general counsel at Harvard. She was appointed to Massachusetts' highest court in 1996 and became chief justice three years later.

In November, she voted with a 4-3 majority in declaring that state's prohibition against gay marriage a violation of the state's constitution. The decision emboldened mayors in San Francisco, upstate New York and Portland, Ore., to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples in acts of civil disobedience. Last month, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to do so.

Marshall lives in Cambridge with her husband, Anthony Lewis, a former New York Times columnist, and has three stepchildren.

Undergraduates five years out of college and anyone with a graduate degree from Yale were allowed to vote; a university spokesman refused to release vote totals but said it was a ``typical election'' in terms of voter participation.